flipflop_diva

“Ellie, do you have to go potty?”

The words that have already come out of my mouth more times than I can count fill the air again. I wait, forever hopeful, for the answer to come. I can hear her in the other room, talking to her dolls and playing with her toys.

I’m about to ask her again when I hear a soft voice.

“No, thank you, Mommy.”

I sigh and glance at the clock. It’s been more than an hour since the last time we tried. I decide to give her five more minutes, and then I’ll have to insist. But maybe I can read a few pages in my new book while I wait.

I reach for my iPad and am just about to touch the kindle app when a loud cry fills the air. Riker is apparently awake.

I put down my iPad and head upstairs to get him, making sure Ellie is staying out of trouble. She seems occupied, so hopefully she will stay that way for the next couple minutes.

I find Riker standing in his crib, shaking the rails as hard as he can. He obviously didn’t get the memo that he should take a long nap today. When he sees me, he lets out another angry shout. I presume it’s to tell me I was not fast enough in getting to him.

“Sorry, buddy,” I say, as I lift him out of his bed. I sniff him as I do so. Of course, he needs a diaper change now too.

I take Riker to the changing pad and engage in a wrestling match with him as I try and change his diaper. I get his diaper changed, but he throws all the stuff he can reach on to the floor. He looks more triumphant than I feel.

We head downstairs where Riker goes into his pack ‘n’ play. He lets out another cry, wanting to be free to crawl around and get into everything, but he’s going to have to wait a few moments.

I walk back over to Ellie, the question already on my lips — “Ellie, do you have to go potty?” — when I see the puddle beside her on the wooden bench she’s sitting on.

I touch her dress, hoping that maybe I am imagining things, but of course I am not.

“Ellie,” I say. “Why didn’t you go pee-pee in the potty?”

She looks at me blankly, like she has no idea what I’m talking about. I usher her to the bathroom so I can change her and then clean up the mess and then try this whole thing again. In the background, Riker protests his own situation with more loud angry shouts.

I remind myself that, really, this is what I’d wanted.

--

I didn’t always want kids. I didn’t ever not want them, but for a long time, it wasn’t something that was super important. It was just something that would happen or it wouldn’t.

When I was in college, on the first day of one of my communications classes, we had to write an essay on what we hoped to accomplish in the future. I wrote about wanting to be a journalist and a best-selling author. When we discussed what we had written as a group a few days later, it turned out almost everyone else had mentioned wanting to be married and have kids.

It was a strange sort of epiphany to realize that was something I hadn’t even considered.

Some of it was just because of who I was — I’ve never been the prettiest or the funniest or the best at anything. Why would someone want to marry and have kids with me? The few dates I went on in high school were far from what one would consider successful, and at that point in college, there hadn’t even been any dates.

But it was still an odd sort of feeling to realize that other people considered those goals, and it hadn’t even crossed my mind to note it. I was okay with it, though. At that point, there were so many other things I wanted more.

It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that the desire to become a mom became stronger. A lot of it was the birth of my nephew and then my niece. They were the first babies I took care of on my own, the first babies I changed diapers for, the first babies I held in my arms the day they were born. They were also the first babies to call me “Auntie” and to tell me they loved me as they gave me hugs.

And I wanted that. Not just occasional drop in visits but little ones of my own.

I started to look into what it would mean to have a baby as a single mom. I talked to my parents and my sister and my friends. It was a terrifying prospect, but I also knew I couldn’t go through life without at least trying.

I gave myself a self-imposed deadline. I would take the first actual step at the end of the year, but first I had a match.com subscription I had gotten from a Groupon that was about to expire, so I wanted to use that up first.

David was the only date I went on thanks to match.com. We were engaged a year later and married a year after that. We both wanted to be parents, to have a family, to raise a child. We didn’t know then what it would entail — the pain of a miscarriage, the ups and down of trying over and over only to see a negative test every month, the heartbreak of a failed IVF, and even the fear and anxiety of actually being pregnant but worrying every moment that something was going to go wrong.

But it didn’t go wrong. And Ellie was born, and Riker two years later, and I finally had the family I hadn’t always know that I had wanted.

--

It’s a few hours later. Ellie is back in diapers, and the wash machine — full of dirty, wet clothes — is running. We’re all upstairs in the bonus room. David and I are watching “Big Brother” on TV while Ellie and Riker play together.

Ellie is riding one of her little cars, and Riker is trying to push her. They are both laughing, their little giggles filling the air, and I can’t help but smile as I watch them more than I watch the show, my heart full of warmth and love.

The little car bumps into the dog’s bed, and Alexa lifts her head to look at them as Ellie falls off, both her and Riker laughing again. Ellie sits up and throws her arms around her brother.

“I love you, Riker!” she says, and my heart swells.

I know that sometime soon, maybe even in the next minute, she’s going to be upset that he touched something that was hers, but for now, they are both happy and content.

“I love you, Ellie. I love you, Riker,” I say to both of them.

Riker makes a happy noise, while Ellie walks over to me to give me a hug. I pull her into my arms, my sweet little girl, and hold her tight.

“I love you, Mommy,” she says, as Riker tries to pat the dog on the head in the background and laughs again.

Someday they are going to grow up. Someday they might not want hugs from me or want to play together. But right now they do, and I want to enjoy these moments as they come.

Because for however hard it is some days, in the end, these are the moments that make it worth it. These are the moments I’m so glad I didn’t miss out on.

I have yet to write that best-selling novel, though I do have a lot of kudos on some of my fics on AO3. And I realized long ago that I don’t actually like being a reporter, which is why I became a copy editor instead. But life changes in the blink of an eye and so do dreams, and as I tuck Ellie and Riker into bed a little bit later that night, I know that they are forever my proof of that.

Non-Fiction. Though luckily this was a couple weeks ago, and Ellie has made some major strides in potty training since then! I was beginning to get worried ;)

And pictures of these cuties:

This was written for

therealljidol Three Strikes Mini Season. It's the second of two entries this week. If you liked either of my entries, please consider voting for me! You should also go read all the other amazing entries. You can find them all here. Voting should be up Monday night!